The present invention relates to supervising a network, that is a network of electronic devices comprising, for example, workstations, personal computers, servers, hubs, routers, bridges, switches, (hereinafter referred to as devices of the network), and links between these devices which may be in the form of physical cable or wireless links. The network may be a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) or other types and may operate in accordance with any desired protocol.
After such a network has been installed, it is desirable for the person appointed network manager to be able to understand the technical operation of the network. In known network management systems, the manner in which the relevant data is retrieved from the managed devices, compiled and displayed has been problematic in several respects. Firstly, the data received from each of the managed devices is simply compiled and displayed as a list of data for the user to interpret. Secondly, the data does not provide information about unmanaged devices. Thirdly, information about a given network device, such as the type of device, location of the device on the network and operating speed of the device, may be contained in different sections of the compiled data. Consequently, conventional systems are cumbersome and difficult to use.
In co-pending UK patent applications numbers, 9910843.3, 9910961.3, 9910844.1, 9910845.8, 9910838.3, 9910837.5, 9910839.1, 9910840.9, 9913531.1 (each in the name of the assignee of the present application) which are incorporated herein, we describe various arrangements for providing automatic interrogation of the network to thereby produce a network map which may be displayed on a visual display unit showing the devices and links between the devices. At its simplest, and where the device is a xe2x80x9cmanagedxe2x80x9d device, this is usually provided by interrogation using a known protocol, such as the SNMP protocol, of the so-called xe2x80x98agentxe2x80x99 of each device which stores the devices unique MAC address, the type of device and the MAC addresses of the devices which are connected to the ports directly or indirectly.
The interrogation of the agent in each device is carried out under the control of a computer program controlled by the network manager""s computer. There are a large number of devices of different general types, for example, workstations, personal computers, servers, hubs, routers, bridges, switches, as well as different subtypes within each type, and also there are different manufacturers of these devices. Thus the agents which the program may be-called upon to interrogate may be one of a very large number of different types of agent which need to be interrogated in different ways.
Furthermore, as the technology is evolving rapidly, new devices, new subgroups of devices, new manufacturers and new models of each device are continuously being introduced to the marketplace.
Whereas it is possible to write a program to deal with all types of agents which the interrogation may encounter at the present time, as new models are introduced the program will rapidly get out of date. It is undesirable to have to rewrite the complete program every few months to deal with new devices.
The invention deals with this problem.
The present invention relates to a program method and apparatus providing elements for interrogating devices in a network.
The present invention provides a method of generating a program suitable for interrogating a selected device in a network in respect of at least one functionality of the device comprising:
providing a plurality of directories of elements, each element comprising a module of program code, each directory having a plurality of elements;
selecting from at least one directory those elements which relate to the selected device and the desired functionality; and
utilising the selected elements to interrogate the selected device.
The present invention also provides network supervising apparatus comprising processor apparatus:
said network supervising apparatus including a plurality of directories of elements, each element comprising a module of program code, each directory having a plurality of elements;
said processor apparatus, in use, selecting from at least one directory those elements which relate to the selected device and the desired functionality to provide a program suitable for interrogating a selected device in a network in respect of at least one functionality of the device.
The present invention also provides a computer program on a computer readable medium or embodied in a carrier wave for use in interrogating a selected device in a network in respect of at least one functionality of the device, said program comprising:
a plurality of directories of elements, each element comprising a module of program code, each directory having a plurality of elements;
program means for selecting from at least one directory those elements which relate to the selected device and the desired functionality; and
program means for utilising the selected elements to interrogate the selected device.